


I See You

by Salt_Teen



Series: Out of the Dark [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Deviant Upgraded Connor | RK900, Elevators, Gavin Reed Needs a Hug, Gavin Reed is Bad at Feelings, Gavin Reed-centric, Gen, I'll update tags as I go, Spider!, thought it would be fun to write a bunch of shorter pieces, you know?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-23
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 21:47:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23764081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salt_Teen/pseuds/Salt_Teen
Summary: "Gavin is pretty cut and dry."Nines had been warned about Gavin, but it doesn't take him long to start noticing things he hadn't been warned about. Things no one else had noticed.Nines gets to know Gavin. Piece by piece, little by little.
Relationships: Upgraded Connor | RK900 & Gavin Reed
Series: Out of the Dark [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1732720
Comments: 7
Kudos: 97





	1. Chapter 1

Gavin is pretty cut and dry.

He is loud, energetic, angry. He is ambitious and unafraid of knocking others down to achieve his own goals. He is good at his job, if not much else.

That’s what everyone tells him, and it’s all Nines thought he’d have to know about the detective.

They’re on their way to a crime scene, on the fourth floor of an apartment building. They are taking the elevator for time's sake. 

When he enters, Nines leans casually against the left wall, Gavin heads straight for the back right corner. He manages to shove some of his hand behind the small handle. Normally, the man will pull out his phone to pass time like this, but he settles on worrying the thumbnail on his free hand between his teeth. 

At first, Nines can’t place what looks so off about it, but then it hits him. Gavin isn’t leaning against the wall like he is, the man is pressing himself as far as he can into the corner. The fingers clutching the handle are white where they touch the cool metal.

“Are you alright, detective?”

Gavin hums and looks at him, surprised.

“Yeah, peachy.” He talks without removing his thumbnail from his mouth.

“You’re going to break your nail if you keep doing that.”

Gavin hums again, a confirmation, and pulls at the nail. After a couple of tries, he peels the excess nail off and pulls it into his mouth. Which is kind of gross, though not the worst thing he could have done with it.

He sees Gavin's jaw move in a way that suggests he's chewing on the fingernail and hears a couple of quiet snaps that confirm that he is.

As Nines watches Gavin he notices two more things. One, he isn't tapping like he usually is, his hands are still against the elevator walls and his feet are flat against the floor. And two, other than when Nines talked to him, his eyes have not left the slowly changing floor number and the top of the elevator. 

_ Is he scared of elevators? He was the one to suggest taking it in the first place…  _

They reach the fourth floor, and the door slides open. If he hadn't been watching Gavin, he might have missed how quickly the man left the elevator. 

The investigation goes by quickly, Gavin seems to be back to his normal self. 

They take the elevator back down. This time Nines notices the way the man's breath hitches when the elevator starts moving.

Nines asks again. "Are you alright? You seem nervous."

Gavin’s eyes don’t leave the number at the top of the elevator. "Fine."

"Are you scared of elevators?"

"I'm not fucking  _ scared  _ of anything." The man used the hand not wedged behind the handle to put air quotes around ‘scared.’

"You just look-"

"Would you shut your  _ fucking  _ mouth?"

"...Sorry, detective."

"Whatever."

Gavin remains standoffish the rest of the day, Nines isn't sure what he did wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Five minutes and forty-six seconds, Gavin was late. Normally he was on time, but today his desk, at least for the moment, was empty. He had not been notified of anything, so for the moment, he stood by the man’s desk. Studying it.

It was uncharacteristically clean today, no files strewn about, no scribbles on loose paper or napkins, only a handful of personal items.

The one that catches his attention is a paperweight set beside the man's terminal. He hadn't seen it before, it was placed carefully out of plain sight. Something tells him that it is frequently buried under the other things on the desk. It's a rose hair tarantula encased in resin. Nines turns it over in his hands, thinking to himself.

"Hey! Gimmie that you fucking prick!"

Gavin snatches the paperweight from his hands, Nines hadn't heard him approaching. The detective holds the spider close to his chest, almost defensively.

He puts it down next to his terminal, taking a second to line it up properly. Normally the man doesn't think twice about slamming things down on his desk.

Gavin mumbles to himself under his breath. "I'm five minutes late to work and you're here touching all my shit."

"I apologize for-"

"Can it. Don't touch my shit. Or if you're going to, leave my spider alone."

The man grumbles something else that Nines doesn't catch and walks off toward the breakroom. After a last look at the paperweight, Nines follows him.

When Nines walks into the breakroom, Gavin is leaning against a counter, his arms crossed over his chest. Fingers tapping quietly on his upper jacket sleeve. The coffee machine next to him is humming quietly, Nines doesn't know enough about it to say if that means anything. 

Gavin doesn't look at him.

Nines has noticed that. Gavin makes eye contact with him when he's not in a mood, but refuses to look his way when he's irritated. There are invisible lines in the sand and Nines feels like he's stepping over one after the other.

"I didn't know you were interested in spiders." Of course he didn't, he barely knows anything about his partner.

A light scoff, Gavin must have been thinking the same thing. 

"Not really. Used to be, that's why I got her."

"I see."

Gavin finishes making his coffee and walks back to his desk without another word.

Tired from too little sleep and not quite fully awake, Gavin drops into his chair and turns on his terminal Nines sits across from him. He tries to start working, but his focus keeps being drawn to Gavin.

The detective's gaze flicks down to the paperweight a few times. The third time his gaze stays.

There's something in the man's eyes, between fondness and sadness. His expression shifts in a way he would have missed if he weren't watching.

From neutral to forced. Trying to keep his composure.

"Detective, are you alright?"

"Peachy," he says.

Nines can't tell why he's so sure that Gavin isn't fine, but he's certain.

They had told him not to worry about Gavin, that the man wasn't worth the trouble.

It doesn't feel as true as it did when he'd first been told. 


	3. Chapter 3

Gavin is passionate about many things. Sure, his beliefs and of course his morals, but also mundane things.

He has a habit of going onto tangents about whatever he's thinking about, and Nines finds it quite endearing. It's interesting to hear someone be so passionate about little things.

"Level with me, tin can, eating the _whole_ apple is the most efficient way to do things right? Like, core and all?"

"I suppose so, why do you ask?"

As much as Nines enjoys listening to others and learning more about them, learning about Gavin is always different. 

"'Cause people always look at me weird when I eat the whole thing… It's part of the apple, Nines." He punctuates the sentence with a bite of the apple he's been rolling around in his hands.

Learning about others is like adding detail to a drawing. He already knows what the whole picture is, but the little details make it more vivid. More alive.

Like when he learned about Tina's cat, or Connor's enjoyment of music, those things make sense. They add to what he knows.

"It's bullshit," he says around the fruit in his mouth, "Sure it doesn't taste the best, but it's _so_ much easier to eat it all than to have to throw away the core."

When he learns about Gavin, it's like finding a puzzle piece. He has to fit it somewhere, and he has no idea when he'll be able to make sense of the picture in front of him.

He learned from Tina that the paperweight on the man's desk had been his pet once, and he learned that purple is his favorite color. 

Normal things, that made him want to forget his first impression of the man. 

"People are like 'you know the seeds are poisonous, right?' _Yes,_ but you'd have to eat several pounds of just apple seeds for it to kill you." 

Nines never adds much to these conversations, but he doesn't really need to. Gavin likes talking, Nines likes listening. It works for both of them.

"And you can do it with any fruit too, like oranges? You can eat the peel. It's not illegal or anything, you _can_ do it. I used to do it all the time."

It's going to be an interesting picture, to say the least.

"You used to?"

"Yeah, _apparently_ I'm allergic to citrus," he uses a hand to put air quotes around 'allergic', "but it's not bad _,_ so now I do it sometimes instead of all the time."

"If you're allergic to citrus, why continue eating it?"

The man stops for a minute, then shrugs. "I like oranges." 

Gavin is not who they said he would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nines just thinks Gavin is neat. Just a funky man he works with. 
> 
> think I might connect this w/ my 5 things 1 thing world... I liked that one.


	4. Chapter 4

"You are  _ not  _ drinking both of those." 

Gavin freezes like a deer in headlights, two cups of coffee in hand.

"Fuck." He says it in such a defeated tone, that it throws Nines for a loop.

"You know I'm not going to let you have those."

With a sigh, the man drops one of the coffees onto his desk. He holds the second close to his chest, scanning the room around him.

"Detective-"

"Shhhh!" The man stage whispers, "Shut your mouth, I'm not drinking both of them."

Nines crosses his arms. "You're not."

"Oh my god… Okay. I'm gonna do something, you're going to watch, and you are not going to say a  _ word  _ to anybody. And I mean  _ anybody. _ "

Gavin gives him a look, making sure Nines won't do or say anything.

"... Okay, Detective."

He watches in silence as Gavin steps over to Chris's desk and places the second coffee there. Gavin then drops into the chair at his own desk, grabbing the first coffee cup.

"Did you do something to that coffee?"

Gavin scoffs, "Of course I did, terminator, Miller hates black coffee."

"What does that have to do with-"

A dismissive wave. "Listen, I'm going to kick your ass if you say anything to Miller"

" _ What  _ are you talking about?"

Gavin turns towards the entrance then back to Nines, pulling an imaginary zipper across his lips with one hand and grabbing his phone with the other. Curious about where this is going, Nines remains quiet. 

Chris, who Gavin must have seen, walks up to his desk and spots the coffee. He picks it up and looks around.

“Did you see anything, Reed?”

Gavin groans, facing away from Chris and typing at something on his screen. “I’ve told you guys I don’t pay attention. Go drink your dumb birthday coffee somewhere else.”

“How about you, Nines?” Chris turns to him, “Did you see anyone?”

Gavin’s eyes flick up to him, then back down to his phone, he shows no other signs that he’s still listening. Nines knows that he is.

“Seen anything about what?”

Chris starts, “Oh, you wouldn’t know about that, would you? Someone leaves coffee on peoples desks for their birthdays.”

“And this is unusual because?”

“No one knows who does it, but whoever it is, knows how everyone likes their coffee. It’s been happening for years.”

“Do they give coffee to specific people only?”

“Yes and no, the only thing we have to go on is apparently they don’t like Reed here. He’s the only person who doesn’t get one.”

Gavin looks up at Nines again, but his hands keep typing. It’s probably a bunch of nonsense, whatever he’s typing, just so he can look busy.

“No, I haven’t seen a thing. Sorry.”

“Ah, that’s alright.” Chris shrugs, “No one else has either.”

Chris turns and sits at his desk, powering on his terminal and pulling a case file from the side of his desk in front of him. 

Gavin remains focused on his phone, but Nines can see the small smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. He can't help but smile himself.

**Author's Note:**

> i think it is a horrible crime for someone to be completely and wholly unknown. for fun, i will be subjecting Gavin to this crime.


End file.
